Strains of Bacillus cereus have been implicated in cases of food poisoning in humans and in bovine mastitis coming, in some instances, from antibiotics used in treatment. Thus, a medium for the rapid presumptive diagnosis of Bacillus cereus would indeed be useful. In fact, several such media have been described including egg yolk, citrate, lithium chloride and polymyxin, as described by Donovan, K. O., "A Selective Medium for Bacillus cereus in Milk", J. Appl. Bacteriol., 21:100-103 (1958); mannitol, egg yolk and polymyxin, as described by Kim et al., "Occurrence of Bacillus cereus in Selected Dry Food Products", J. Milk Food Technol. 34:12-15 (1971); egg yolk and polymyxin as described by Kim et al., "Enumeration and Identification of Bacillus cereus in Foods", Appl. Microbiol. 22:581-587 (1971); and mannitol, egg yolk and phenol red agar as described by Mossel, et al., "Enumeration of Bacillus cereus in Foods," Appl. Microbiol., 15:650-653 (1967).
The above media are all egg yolk containing media. Unfortunately, unless such media are handled with extreme care, a troublesome spreading problem may result.
The use of tellurite as an inhibitor was reported by Fleming, A. F., "On the Specific Antibacterial Properties of Penicillin and Potassium Tellurite", J. Pathogenic. Bacteriol., 35:831-842 (1932). Zebovitz et al. report the use of tellurite (and 3% glycerine) for coagulase positive staphylococci, in "Tellurite-Glycine Agar:A Selective Plating Medium for the Quantitative Detection of Coagulase-Positive Staphylococci", J. Bacteriol, 70:686-690 (1955).